Police excavate former youth home in body search

British police focussed their search on a second area of a former Channel Islands children's home on Sunday after a body was found there, Jersey police said.

A child's body parts, thought to date from the early 1980s, were found at the Haut de la Garenne house in St Martin on Saturday after a sniffer dog discovered them through several inches of concrete.

Police, who have not said whether the remains are of a male or female, are now focusing on a second area of the house, a site also detected by the sniffer dog.

"There's a still a lot of area to be searched," Jersey's Deputy Chief Police Officer Lenny Harper told the BBC.

"We continue to use the specialist advice and expertise, including the dog, to continue to screen other areas we have reservations about."

Members of Harper's specialist team, which numbers up to 20 people, are engaged in fingertip sifting.

The excavation of Haut de la Garenne began after Jersey police received information from three different sources about the possibility of there being remains.

Last November Jersey police launched an investigation into alleged child abuse on the island, including Haut de la Garenne.

Last month Gordon Claude Wateridge, 76, was charged with three offences of indecent assaults on girls under 16 between 1969 and 1979 at Haut de la Garenne.
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